"It's going to be a combination Scopes trial, revolution in the streets, Woodstock Festival and People's Park, all rolled into one." -- Abbie Hoffman
* * * *
"It's going to be the most important political trial in the history of the United States." -- Jay Miller, director of the Illinois Division of the American Civil Liberties Union
* * * *
"This is a criminal trial, not a political trial. I intend to play it as straight as possible. They can monopolize the rhetoric. I'm interested in the jury." -- Thomas Aquinas Foran, the United States Attorney
* * * *
"Gentlemen, let's get something straight. The police aren't in the streets to create disorder; they are in the streets to preserve disorder." -- Mayor Richard Daley
* * * *
ABBIE HOFFMAN: Are you asking if I had those thoughts or if I wrote that I had those thoughts? There's a difference.
RICHARD G. SCHULTZ, THE ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY: It's a convenient difference, isn't it Mr. Hoffman?
ABBIE HOFFMAN: I don't know what you mean. I've never been on trial for my thoughts before.
* * * *
"Those who incite to violence should be punished whether or not freedom of speech is impaired."
-- Congressman Robert L.F. Sikes (Democrat, Florida), during debate on the "antiriot' provisions of the 1968 Civil Rights Act.
* * * *
"The Conspiracy in the streets needs: freedom, actors, peace, turf, money, sunshine, musicians, instruments, people, props, cars, air, water, costumes, sound equipment, love, guns, freaks, friends, anarchy, Huey free, a truck, airplanes, power, glory, old clothes, space, truth, Nero, paint, paint, help, rope, swimming hole, ice cream, dope, nookie, moonship, Om, lords, health, no hassles, land, pigs, time, patriots, spacesuits, a Buick, people's justice, Eldridge, lumber, panthers, real things, good times." -- Leaflet handed out by the Conspiracy office in the week before the trial.
* * * *
"Conspiracy? Hell, we couldn't agree on lunch." -- Abbie Hoffman
* * * *
"They understood that you didn't have to attack the fortress anymore. You could just surround it, make faces at the people inside and let them have nervous breakdowns and destroy themselves." -- Norman Mailer
* * * *
"Would you like your children to grow up like them?" -- A Chicago Seven Trial juror
* * * *
"Our strategy was to give Judge Hoffman a heart attack. We gave the court system a heart attack, which is even better." -- Jerry Rubin
Some of the quotations above are reported in The Barnyard Epithet by J. Anthony Lukas